What Responsibility the Worlds Needs to Address Climate Change?

The meeting in Lima aimed at discussing what responsibilities the world must take to address the challenges that the planet is facing, not only related to the climate but also to globalisation impacts and interdependence between countries.

The event was designed to consolidate and disclose the document "Manifest from Lima to Paris." A dialogue was held between representatives of the Latin American countries, state officials, Andean parliamentarians and leaders of civil society. As expected, the program included a variety of actors who will grant the multidimensional nature of the problem of responsibility for climate change.

This document is a loud and clear warning, a call to governments on the need to develop an international agreement for countries to open their extreme nationalism in favour of an effective agreement that goes beyond climate. The idea is to establish new forms of environmental governance that will have joint responsibilities as an ethical basis. The main objective is to adopt at the UN, a Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities, complementary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Forum of Ethics and Responsibilities (FER) presented at Rio + 20, in 2012, a first version of this proposal, requiring UN member countries to undertake their responsibilities on the socio-environmental crisis in response to era of limits in which we live.

The FER proposal for a global climate agreement was formally delivered to the representative of the Peruvian state, host of the COP20. This manifesto launched in Lima by FER is open for public consultation in order to receive collaborations and accessions and thus initiate a process towards COP21 in Paris in 2015. A proposal was also launched to hold a World Assembly of Citizens also before COP21. The latter should be a participatory process that will depend on the involvement of local governments and the mobilization of all sectors of society.

The Forum of Ethics and Responsibilities formed more than 10 years ago and has as its main theme "responsibility". Ricardo Jiménez Chilean sociologist and Isis de Palma, Brazilian edu-comunicator, both members of the FER, coordinated the initiative for this meeting. The meeting was also possible through a partnership with the Andean MP Alberto Adrianzén who also provided the room of the Andean Community. This activity was the only organized by civil society to be celebrated in the Andean Community - CAN in Lima; all the others were only states events.

First reflections from the Symposium on Law, Responsibility and Governance held in Aotearoa/New Zealand, on 23-25 November 2014. The Symposium to develop law for Responsibility for water and climate brought fresh winds to the sails of the FER vision of responsibility in sustainable societies.